Hey Guys,
Ok mental ray question between Houdini and XSI. Ok so if I make a Mental Ray Material in XSI and then save it out can I just bring in that Mental Ray material and apply it in the SHOP to my object without any problems and then Render straight out to Mental Ray from ROPS?
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
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Technical Discussion » Mental Ray Question
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Houdini Lounge » 3DBuzz VTMs
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey,
Well now you do have particles in your Escape they SOP POPs. As for comparing Houdini Particles Full Blown with Maya or Softimage you can't because at best Maya and Softimage are more like Houdini's SOP POPs. POPs Full Blown is unlike any other 3D Package. No one else has anything like it. You have to do alot of scripting in the other packages to what you can do graphically with Houdini with particles and you can do Houdini paritcles much faster. So I will disagree with putting the Full Particles into Escape. Although in the next release I would like to see a SOP DOPS. Yes your right about people migrating to Houdini if they can't learn it in a decent time frame. I have also heard of studios complaining about the Training up people to Houdini. I would also say that since Softimage does not support their XSI Foundation so their $500 package is going to be worthless to a studio if they can't get support but its great for freelancers. So for that reason alone Houdini Select's Pricing is fine because you can get support for it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well now you do have particles in your Escape they SOP POPs. As for comparing Houdini Particles Full Blown with Maya or Softimage you can't because at best Maya and Softimage are more like Houdini's SOP POPs. POPs Full Blown is unlike any other 3D Package. No one else has anything like it. You have to do alot of scripting in the other packages to what you can do graphically with Houdini with particles and you can do Houdini paritcles much faster. So I will disagree with putting the Full Particles into Escape. Although in the next release I would like to see a SOP DOPS. Yes your right about people migrating to Houdini if they can't learn it in a decent time frame. I have also heard of studios complaining about the Training up people to Houdini. I would also say that since Softimage does not support their XSI Foundation so their $500 package is going to be worthless to a studio if they can't get support but its great for freelancers. So for that reason alone Houdini Select's Pricing is fine because you can get support for it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Massive
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Again,
Another little something that might be of interest to you. In Houdini if you are doing a point based crowd sim don't use POP sliding to calculate the terrian traversion. Instead get the particles to follow the UVs of the surface. This will be much faster to bake calculate and your render time will be far far less.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Another little something that might be of interest to you. In Houdini if you are doing a point based crowd sim don't use POP sliding to calculate the terrian traversion. Instead get the particles to follow the UVs of the surface. This will be much faster to bake calculate and your render time will be far far less.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » 3DBuzz VTMs
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Guys,
Well this has been one of my biggest concerns. I honestly don't even care if SIdeFX charges for the Learning Videos. Would gladly pay for a Production Series of DVD videos. Like a whole series of videos on SHOPS, VOPS, ROPS. Then another DVD on SOPS and OBJ. Another DVD on Rigging. Another on Character Animation and CHOPs and yet another DVD on Particles POPs/ SOP POPs. SOP POPs was pretty much covered in the 3D Buzz Videos anyhow. I mean you could charge like $50 or $100 a DVD. I don't care it would be far cheaper than hiring out a Houdini in house Trainer to make these learning Vidoes and then when they are finally finished train up the people on vidoes. I mean the trainer could very well run like $100,000 a year so that cost has to get added into the costs of the software. This is fine for large studios that will likely have a training person anyhow but for small studios this is a serious impact on their production capabilities. Also I will even take this time to point out something I have wanted to mention but COPs aka Houdini Halo is over priced with the advent of XSI Essentials 4.2 including the compositing package into their software for $2,000. Halo is $3,000 and does the same thing as their compositing package but you also get all the rest of XSI Essentials. So its really like getting Houdini Escape + Houdini Halo for $2,000. Houdini Escape is priced right and so is Select in my opinion. However I do think Houdini Halo should be packaged with Houdini Escape and Houdini Halo should be dropped down to like $1,000 or $1,500 and compete directly with after effects. Because lets face it After Effects has nothing on Houdini Halo and they could very well take that market.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well this has been one of my biggest concerns. I honestly don't even care if SIdeFX charges for the Learning Videos. Would gladly pay for a Production Series of DVD videos. Like a whole series of videos on SHOPS, VOPS, ROPS. Then another DVD on SOPS and OBJ. Another DVD on Rigging. Another on Character Animation and CHOPs and yet another DVD on Particles POPs/ SOP POPs. SOP POPs was pretty much covered in the 3D Buzz Videos anyhow. I mean you could charge like $50 or $100 a DVD. I don't care it would be far cheaper than hiring out a Houdini in house Trainer to make these learning Vidoes and then when they are finally finished train up the people on vidoes. I mean the trainer could very well run like $100,000 a year so that cost has to get added into the costs of the software. This is fine for large studios that will likely have a training person anyhow but for small studios this is a serious impact on their production capabilities. Also I will even take this time to point out something I have wanted to mention but COPs aka Houdini Halo is over priced with the advent of XSI Essentials 4.2 including the compositing package into their software for $2,000. Halo is $3,000 and does the same thing as their compositing package but you also get all the rest of XSI Essentials. So its really like getting Houdini Escape + Houdini Halo for $2,000. Houdini Escape is priced right and so is Select in my opinion. However I do think Houdini Halo should be packaged with Houdini Escape and Houdini Halo should be dropped down to like $1,000 or $1,500 and compete directly with after effects. Because lets face it After Effects has nothing on Houdini Halo and they could very well take that market.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Massive
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Guys,
I will back up JC statements. When I was at last siggraph for the crowd sim course they presented massive and one of the things that struct me was that one of the guys that was working on LOTR with massive to get the ORCs to stand in formation for a really long distant shot took 2 days to create the rule set up. The characters were nothing more than practically dots on the screen and each ORC was 5 hundred thousand polys. It just did not make since and seemed to be a big waste. You could do the same with thing with a point based system in Houdini to generate your crowds in like 5 minutes painting them in where you want to by using points generated on the geometry and get great results. Also you would not need to use 500k polys for each character. You could get away with only a few hundred or use a LOD to switch down to a lower res object when the camera is too far away for anyone to care. Basically I would look at using houdini for longer distant crowd sim shots because the results won't look much different and you can set it up much faster than doing it in massive. However if you have a close up to mid range shots then you better use massive or develope your own Houdini Massive tool. But like you said, you don't have time to create your own Houdini massive tool based on your current production schedule. I think it is really important to have a dual point and AI solution so you can switch back and forth between the two to get good results fastest. You defantly want to use Houdini for your point based crowd sim and not be like ILM who had to write 20 scripts just to orient the particle then bake the crowd sim particle data and go through every line of code to delete a single charater which would result in a ghost interaction effect because you basically have precalculated actions of character particles interacting the deleted character. So then it is possible to have a character having an intense fight with the air. lol Maya does not seem to be a good idea for doing the particle crowd sim. If you use Houdini you can delete the character based on his particle ID number and boom you are ready to play it back. That is so much faster and easier. The bad and the ugly. If you decide to do your own crowd sim. Then you really need to have a good LOD system because you have to use Copies and not instances so LOD really matters in this. Bake your simulation when you get it the way you want because otherwise the calculations at render time will go through the roof.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I will back up JC statements. When I was at last siggraph for the crowd sim course they presented massive and one of the things that struct me was that one of the guys that was working on LOTR with massive to get the ORCs to stand in formation for a really long distant shot took 2 days to create the rule set up. The characters were nothing more than practically dots on the screen and each ORC was 5 hundred thousand polys. It just did not make since and seemed to be a big waste. You could do the same with thing with a point based system in Houdini to generate your crowds in like 5 minutes painting them in where you want to by using points generated on the geometry and get great results. Also you would not need to use 500k polys for each character. You could get away with only a few hundred or use a LOD to switch down to a lower res object when the camera is too far away for anyone to care. Basically I would look at using houdini for longer distant crowd sim shots because the results won't look much different and you can set it up much faster than doing it in massive. However if you have a close up to mid range shots then you better use massive or develope your own Houdini Massive tool. But like you said, you don't have time to create your own Houdini massive tool based on your current production schedule. I think it is really important to have a dual point and AI solution so you can switch back and forth between the two to get good results fastest. You defantly want to use Houdini for your point based crowd sim and not be like ILM who had to write 20 scripts just to orient the particle then bake the crowd sim particle data and go through every line of code to delete a single charater which would result in a ghost interaction effect because you basically have precalculated actions of character particles interacting the deleted character. So then it is possible to have a character having an intense fight with the air. lol Maya does not seem to be a good idea for doing the particle crowd sim. If you use Houdini you can delete the character based on his particle ID number and boom you are ready to play it back. That is so much faster and easier. The bad and the ugly. If you decide to do your own crowd sim. Then you really need to have a good LOD system because you have to use Copies and not instances so LOD really matters in this. Bake your simulation when you get it the way you want because otherwise the calculations at render time will go through the roof.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Houdin-Real Flow plugins v0.98.5.2 ready
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Well from what I hear the Fluid DOPS will not be in the next release but the release after that. Until that time Real Flow Baby
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » IGES Support
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey JC,
I will also back up the Rhino claim. It is good for more than just Houdini. They seem to export to all the important packages with specific compatabilities. Even PolyTrans won't give you the same level of transfer support that Rhino will for certain file types.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I will also back up the Rhino claim. It is good for more than just Houdini. They seem to export to all the important packages with specific compatabilities. Even PolyTrans won't give you the same level of transfer support that Rhino will for certain file types.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Houdin-Real Flow plugins v0.98.5.2 ready
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Mark,
Real Flow is awesome I know we defantly have it marked if we get any contracts that involve Fluid Dynamics. Are you one of the Developers by chance. Its just a question for the curious.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Real Flow is awesome I know we defantly have it marked if we get any contracts that involve Fluid Dynamics. Are you one of the Developers by chance. Its just a question for the curious.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Architectural Visualization Pricing
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Actually I was thinking of the OTL idea but that is more long term and not short term. Short term I am not sure if its possible. The only way I can think of doing it would be to redo the entire architectural plan by hand into the target software which would be very time consuming and inaccurate. Also it means no L-systems so I would have to hand model every tree etc. As it being a joke then yeah its funny. I didn't know you were joking at the time. lol Yeah $500 net a day would be great.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Architectural Visualization Pricing
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey,
I was just wondering if that was normal for residential. It would be more than a day to because I the project is not just being handed off to me as an animator but I have to go out setup the contracts, right the contracts, and that is $400-$500 gross. Not much money net after expenses. I doubt I could get a contract a day for the residential of course if I could then yeah that would not be bad. I think I would need more than one of those contracts at once in order to cover expenses. I think would need about 4 to 5 of them. I will just have to see what I can pull off.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I was just wondering if that was normal for residential. It would be more than a day to because I the project is not just being handed off to me as an animator but I have to go out setup the contracts, right the contracts, and that is $400-$500 gross. Not much money net after expenses. I doubt I could get a contract a day for the residential of course if I could then yeah that would not be bad. I think I would need more than one of those contracts at once in order to cover expenses. I think would need about 4 to 5 of them. I will just have to see what I can pull off.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Architectural Visualization Pricing
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Guys,
Hopefully this is not too much of a touchy subject. I know our little company was getting around $1,500 to $2,000 a Architectural Visualization Job for Commerical Buildings in TN. However we never did any residential homes. I just talked to the president of the home building association here in Atlanta and was indicating that they were only paying around $400 to $500 for residential contracts. This seems pretty low to me but I am not really surprised since it is residential homes. Does anyone bother with the residential homes and do you find this to be a low ball figure? Is $1,500 and $2,000 in keeping with the commerical building contracts anyone else has done? I know this is a sensitive subject but I have encountered the residential visualization market.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Hopefully this is not too much of a touchy subject. I know our little company was getting around $1,500 to $2,000 a Architectural Visualization Job for Commerical Buildings in TN. However we never did any residential homes. I just talked to the president of the home building association here in Atlanta and was indicating that they were only paying around $400 to $500 for residential contracts. This seems pretty low to me but I am not really surprised since it is residential homes. Does anyone bother with the residential homes and do you find this to be a low ball figure? Is $1,500 and $2,000 in keeping with the commerical building contracts anyone else has done? I know this is a sensitive subject but I have encountered the residential visualization market.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Large scale modeling in Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Peter,
Well actually you can lock a node high up in the chain and then right click that node to select all the nodes below that node in the chain and then delete them which gets rid of the procedural chain of nodes. Also they do have a poly list of operators when you hit tab. No I don't mean in the viewport like XSI's NVDIA's Shader Library API. Houdini uses OpenGL and in the next version they will support OpenGL 2. So thats not really an issue for Houdini in hte near future. No what I mean is you can not bake out/ render out displacement maps for Polygons/Subdivision surfaces in Houdini, but you can bake out render out displacement maps for NURBS only. Its frustrating since alot of people use polys. I agree that the subdivide would be nice if it was sped up, but also the extrude tool would be great to be modified to do the X subdivides and other s shapes that XSI allows. They are the only ones that do it. I don't think that XSI is any faster to model with. It has its pluses and minuses. If you want real speed I would recommend for poly/subd only SILO at http://www.nevercenter.com/ [nevercenter.com] I would also recommend to not just model in SILO but combine SILO modeled parts for when you need speed and then import them into Houdini and use Houdini' procedural system to go the next step. This program is only $109 and it is so fast. We speed model tested the program up to 50 booleans straight without one hangup and the program never slowed down. Which is remarkable when you are talking about booleans and complex objects. They only have SILO for Windows right now but they are suppose to release a linux version soon. Again I would use this in conjunction with Houdini and not by itself for modeling.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well actually you can lock a node high up in the chain and then right click that node to select all the nodes below that node in the chain and then delete them which gets rid of the procedural chain of nodes. Also they do have a poly list of operators when you hit tab. No I don't mean in the viewport like XSI's NVDIA's Shader Library API. Houdini uses OpenGL and in the next version they will support OpenGL 2. So thats not really an issue for Houdini in hte near future. No what I mean is you can not bake out/ render out displacement maps for Polygons/Subdivision surfaces in Houdini, but you can bake out render out displacement maps for NURBS only. Its frustrating since alot of people use polys. I agree that the subdivide would be nice if it was sped up, but also the extrude tool would be great to be modified to do the X subdivides and other s shapes that XSI allows. They are the only ones that do it. I don't think that XSI is any faster to model with. It has its pluses and minuses. If you want real speed I would recommend for poly/subd only SILO at http://www.nevercenter.com/ [nevercenter.com] I would also recommend to not just model in SILO but combine SILO modeled parts for when you need speed and then import them into Houdini and use Houdini' procedural system to go the next step. This program is only $109 and it is so fast. We speed model tested the program up to 50 booleans straight without one hangup and the program never slowed down. Which is remarkable when you are talking about booleans and complex objects. They only have SILO for Windows right now but they are suppose to release a linux version soon. Again I would use this in conjunction with Houdini and not by itself for modeling.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » Rendering a photoreal car
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Deecue,
Here is a link that will help you out with Mental Ray shading. http://www.3dtutorial.com/xsi.php?detail=25 [3dtutorial.com] You have to create Mental Ray shaders in another app anyhow to bring them into Houdini. A little secret desire of mine would be for Houdini to create Mental Ray shaders natively like they do Renderman and Mantra shaders in the VOPs network. I will have to get back to you on posting that. I am not sure if I really want to to be honest. I wish someone had created a set of videos for Renderman/Mantra like those Mental Ray videos for a production artistic viewpoint.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Here is a link that will help you out with Mental Ray shading. http://www.3dtutorial.com/xsi.php?detail=25 [3dtutorial.com] You have to create Mental Ray shaders in another app anyhow to bring them into Houdini. A little secret desire of mine would be for Houdini to create Mental Ray shaders natively like they do Renderman and Mantra shaders in the VOPs network. I will have to get back to you on posting that. I am not sure if I really want to to be honest. I wish someone had created a set of videos for Renderman/Mantra like those Mental Ray videos for a production artistic viewpoint.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Vex sop vop tutorials
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey,
The real good ones are in the 3D Buzz DVDs and I highly recommend that you buy them. They go much further than the SideFX videos. If you want to really really learn VOPs, VEX, Mantra, etc then you need to start reading renderman books. Renderman Essentials is a good starting point.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
The real good ones are in the 3D Buzz DVDs and I highly recommend that you buy them. They go much further than the SideFX videos. If you want to really really learn VOPs, VEX, Mantra, etc then you need to start reading renderman books. Renderman Essentials is a good starting point.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Large scale modeling in Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys,
You mentioned cleaning up models I have always thought that Houdini needs a quad SOP that converts the topology of a polygon model from triangles into quads on the mesh. They do have this function in several other packages and this tool is great for cleaning up scanned in geometery but it would also be great when Houdini converts your quad object into triangles during say a cookie operation. Last time I checked Houdini did not have this kind of tool so please correct me if I am wrong. This would be a great tool. Another great tool that falls into the modeling shading category is the fact that you can not bake displacement maps on poly/subd surfaces and only on NURBS. I do think this is a problem since every 3D package I can think of allows you to do this. Just some ideas of some modeling features that would be really powerful and seem to be missing.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
You mentioned cleaning up models I have always thought that Houdini needs a quad SOP that converts the topology of a polygon model from triangles into quads on the mesh. They do have this function in several other packages and this tool is great for cleaning up scanned in geometery but it would also be great when Houdini converts your quad object into triangles during say a cookie operation. Last time I checked Houdini did not have this kind of tool so please correct me if I am wrong. This would be a great tool. Another great tool that falls into the modeling shading category is the fact that you can not bake displacement maps on poly/subd surfaces and only on NURBS. I do think this is a problem since every 3D package I can think of allows you to do this. Just some ideas of some modeling features that would be really powerful and seem to be missing.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Architecture rendering in Houdini.
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
You know you can also use Mental Ray if you aren't comfortable with Mantra although if you know Air then you will have a really easy time doing Mantra. They are going to be almost identical. Mantra is based around Renderman just like Air is. So … you shouldn't have any trouble. Well like one of the other posts I put up in dealing with architecture. I would create and Otl that was say for a window. Then load pieces of the frame that could be loaded in as one SOP and which could then be scaled, rotated, translated, with shops already applied, and you could choose a style of windows that relates to certain objects. That would allow you to minamize your rendertimes and generate buildings much faster. Because those pieces that are loaded into the window OTL can all be instaced and configured off of loaded in pieces. Check out the candle OTL tutorial if you have not already but it will give you a real good idea of what you can do with OTLs. Then just think of how you can apply that to Architectural Visualiazation. Houdini does instances pretty fast in Mantra.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
You know you can also use Mental Ray if you aren't comfortable with Mantra although if you know Air then you will have a really easy time doing Mantra. They are going to be almost identical. Mantra is based around Renderman just like Air is. So … you shouldn't have any trouble. Well like one of the other posts I put up in dealing with architecture. I would create and Otl that was say for a window. Then load pieces of the frame that could be loaded in as one SOP and which could then be scaled, rotated, translated, with shops already applied, and you could choose a style of windows that relates to certain objects. That would allow you to minamize your rendertimes and generate buildings much faster. Because those pieces that are loaded into the window OTL can all be instaced and configured off of loaded in pieces. Check out the candle OTL tutorial if you have not already but it will give you a real good idea of what you can do with OTLs. Then just think of how you can apply that to Architectural Visualiazation. Houdini does instances pretty fast in Mantra.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » Importing DWG CAD files into Houdini?
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
I know OpenGL converts NURBS to Polygons do to hardware limitiations if I render right. I might not remember right. I don't know if NURBS are converted to Polygons from a software render. That could be totally different. I just noticed that if I took a Polygon surface and select for the object to polys to be rendered as subdivision surfaces I get like a render time of say 2 minutes on a large poly sufrace. Then if I convert it to NURBS and got something like 2 seconds. I mean it was a huge difference. I also tested some other NURBS surfaces and got simular results. So yeah I think the NURBS in houdini are faster in my experience. I don't know why that is though which I hate not knowing why something is because then there is always room for error.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I know OpenGL converts NURBS to Polygons do to hardware limitiations if I render right. I might not remember right. I don't know if NURBS are converted to Polygons from a software render. That could be totally different. I just noticed that if I took a Polygon surface and select for the object to polys to be rendered as subdivision surfaces I get like a render time of say 2 minutes on a large poly sufrace. Then if I convert it to NURBS and got something like 2 seconds. I mean it was a huge difference. I also tested some other NURBS surfaces and got simular results. So yeah I think the NURBS in houdini are faster in my experience. I don't know why that is though which I hate not knowing why something is because then there is always room for error.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » Importing DWG CAD files into Houdini?
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey,
Correct me if I am wrong but DXF is not a format that supports NURBS. Quite frankly I lose alot of information in the .dxf format gerenally. Actually I am a C++ Guru but I don't know how much time I would have to code that plugin and how involved it would get. I would just have to learn HDK which probably would not be too bad for me considering I already know Maya's SDK. The things I would really want to see with an import of a CAD file is the units and elivations preserved and for all of the curves to be NURBS when the import is done. I have not seen this happen correctly yet with DXF plus I tend to see alot of errors in DXF format. I prefer OBJ over DXF any day. The best solution I agree would to be to have a DWG import plugin into houdini that even does some of the building for you in an auto modeling system. I have already thought of this to some extent but I don't know again how involved this would be. The smart thing would be to build components of the building in parts that would be OTLs that would read in base parts objects as a library type function system that would allow you quickly and rapidly prototype a building and build new parts of the components of the building to add to the library. I am not explaining this well but it makes alot of sense in my head. lol Basically a window would be a component of the building and a piece of the frame would be a part to the component and you would look up that part from a library of window frame parts as a funtion in the OTL straight from the hard drive. Anyhow thats probably how I would do it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Correct me if I am wrong but DXF is not a format that supports NURBS. Quite frankly I lose alot of information in the .dxf format gerenally. Actually I am a C++ Guru but I don't know how much time I would have to code that plugin and how involved it would get. I would just have to learn HDK which probably would not be too bad for me considering I already know Maya's SDK. The things I would really want to see with an import of a CAD file is the units and elivations preserved and for all of the curves to be NURBS when the import is done. I have not seen this happen correctly yet with DXF plus I tend to see alot of errors in DXF format. I prefer OBJ over DXF any day. The best solution I agree would to be to have a DWG import plugin into houdini that even does some of the building for you in an auto modeling system. I have already thought of this to some extent but I don't know again how involved this would be. The smart thing would be to build components of the building in parts that would be OTLs that would read in base parts objects as a library type function system that would allow you quickly and rapidly prototype a building and build new parts of the components of the building to add to the library. I am not explaining this well but it makes alot of sense in my head. lol Basically a window would be a component of the building and a piece of the frame would be a part to the component and you would look up that part from a library of window frame parts as a funtion in the OTL straight from the hard drive. Anyhow thats probably how I would do it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » Importing DWG CAD files into Houdini?
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
Do you have a link to this ACAD program. I prefer NURBS because then I can switch to polys at any time I want, but I have noticed that houdini renders much faster with NURBS. Its is blazing fast on mantra with NURBS, and Houdini has really strong NURBS tools. So I have several reasons for using NURBS Curves. I don't make the autocad files they are given to me from clients that want a visualization. So I generally don't mess with their CAD files that they submit to me.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
P.S. Thanks for the Info
Do you have a link to this ACAD program. I prefer NURBS because then I can switch to polys at any time I want, but I have noticed that houdini renders much faster with NURBS. Its is blazing fast on mantra with NURBS, and Houdini has really strong NURBS tools. So I have several reasons for using NURBS Curves. I don't make the autocad files they are given to me from clients that want a visualization. So I generally don't mess with their CAD files that they submit to me.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
P.S. Thanks for the Info
Technical Discussion » Rendering a photoreal car
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey,
yeah but there is more too this. You need diffused fuzzy reflections with your raytracing solution in the ray incidence because real reflections are not clear and the closer the object is to the car the sharper the reflection and if it is really far away it pretty much does not register. I know how to do this in mental ray but not in VEX so thats why I have not responded to your post. Also you need to do paint flecks so you need some kind of pattern that you can repeat alot that will be very very small that will give the impression of paint flecks. Good realistic car paints can be difficult to make and it generally takes more than just slapping a fresnel light incident. You usally need some way of adjusting the light ray incident of the fresnel effect by using some multipliers. I know the process but I do not know how to implement it in VEX and VEX is a great shading system its just I have a lack of knowledge in the Renderman area. Hopefully someone else can address these different areas I have mentioned.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
yeah but there is more too this. You need diffused fuzzy reflections with your raytracing solution in the ray incidence because real reflections are not clear and the closer the object is to the car the sharper the reflection and if it is really far away it pretty much does not register. I know how to do this in mental ray but not in VEX so thats why I have not responded to your post. Also you need to do paint flecks so you need some kind of pattern that you can repeat alot that will be very very small that will give the impression of paint flecks. Good realistic car paints can be difficult to make and it generally takes more than just slapping a fresnel light incident. You usally need some way of adjusting the light ray incident of the fresnel effect by using some multipliers. I know the process but I do not know how to implement it in VEX and VEX is a great shading system its just I have a lack of knowledge in the Renderman area. Hopefully someone else can address these different areas I have mentioned.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
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